Cheat Just a Little!

Eve Challoner Pella is a MPP constituency assistant and a past Executive
Committee member of the PTA in Toronto.

This combination of advice, recipes, and weight-training exercises will
likely find disciples among fitness fanatics. The author exhorts us to
eat only fruit before noon, carbohydrates at lunch, and proteins in the
evening; to refrain from counting calories; to eat only until satisfied;
and to weight-train two to three times per week.

While Harlingten’s nutritional advice is generally sound, her dictum
“only fruit before lunch” is questionable. Surely it makes more
sense to “cleanse the body” with fruit overnight (i.e., to reserve
the lightest, most easily digested meal for the body’s rest period).
Furthermore, not all fruits are created equal; for example, bananas are
starchy and high in potassium, while mangos are high in vitamin A.
Vegetables are barely mentioned in the book’s lengthy first section.
There is an interesting and pertinent discussion on the merits of
margarine versus butter, but no mention of grape seed oil. Most of the
protein recipes use chicken, turkey, and beef. There are few fish
recipes (and none for lamb or pork), and no mention of tofu. Desserts
are on the rich and chocolaty side. The instructions for weight-training
are complicated and almost impossible to follow. Good sequential photos
would have been far preferable. In general, this book would have
benefited from less exhortation, more simplicity, and a truly holistic
approach.